California Dreaming

WRITTEN BY CHRISTIAN KÖHLERT

Monterey, California

I am sitting in Monterey right now while writing this entry. It has been quite some time since my last update on this blog. What shall I say? So many things have happened and I was just too busy adopting to different situations. Still I want to give a brief summary.

Otis, Oregon

Well, let’s start where I ended my story last time. I stayed for over two weeks at my friends in Otis – a small town close to Lincoln City right at the beautiful beach of Oregon. My friends there are both in their 60s and developed a quite different lifestyle. While Bary is still very active and doing various businesses, Gary on the other hand does nothing more than smoking weed to “numb” the symptoms of his diabetes and writing articles on his website. Sometimes he walks on the beach, though. Anyhow – that is pretty much everything you can expect from him. At least so it seemed.

Besides organizing stuff for the trip to Central America I helped Bary on his music project – JaSkaMon. It’s a form of pop reggae with some influences that are hard to define. Great music, though!

I enjoyed my time there very much – especially with the warm days that indian summer brought along.

Bary with his band JaSkaMon and various shots of Oregon

Petroglyphs at Pyramid Lake

Because I am travelling alone since I left Canada I offered Gary a place in my camper to join me going southbound. First he felt too old and sick for that, but somehow he convinced himself to give it a little more effort. So we continued together. What a surprise!

First stop was Crater Lake in Oregon. It’s a gorgeous national park in Oregon. During our joint trip I could interview Gary in detail on his very interesting life story. I consider him one of the last living experts on petroglyphs. Along with other people around the world he was able to translate certain petroglyphs that look alike but are located on different continents. Some date back many thousand years b.c.

In essence his work casts a new light on human history implying other highly developed cultures that vanished due to a global event. If you are interested, have a look on his website: www.viewzone.com

Even though his website layout is somehow stuck in the 90s, it is filled with great articles and profound knowledge. His full name is Gary Vey, but he once wrote a book under the synonym Dan Eden. This book had a big impact some years ago. He even got invited to Germany to speak about the findings. That’s where we met for the first time. You can also find the free PDF version of his book on his website. I can only recommend to read it when you are keen on ancient history.

Our main goal was to see the petroglyphs at Pyramid Lake. This area is located in an indian reservation in Nevada. The natives are very protective when it comes to their land. Well, we managed to get a glimpse on this carvings anyway. Gary Vay wrote an article about it that you can find here.

Petroglyphs at Pyramid Lake, Nevada

Back to the Coast of California

Regarding his age and condition, Gary had his adventure on this trip. In high altitudes it gets very cold at night. I think he was not really prepared for that. In South Lake Tahoe he decided to fly back. Still we had a great time together and I admire his effort to accompany me so far.

In South Lake Tahoe I had the opportunity to meet an old friend from my hometown. Jörg was doing a roadtrip with his dad. Somehow it is always kind of unreal meeting people from your hometown so far away. Still we spend a nice evening together. We even repeated this some days later.

After a cold night in Yosemite National Park and a very inspiring encounter with a hitchhiker who I picked up, I met some friends in Santa Cruz. I have been living with those four in a house in Wellington, New Zealand, when I stayed there for a couple of months. That was back in 2014. It got unreal again, but again we had a lovely time together.

Now I continue my trip down to Mexico. According to our plan I will pick up Jens in Ensenada around the 20th of October. Frederique is going like a Swiss watch and I am looking forward to see more of California’s beauty. If you have any suggestions – let me know!